Small growth in the mass media market - households now spend on
video on-demand services

The value of the mass media market was about
EUR 3.8 billion in 2017. Compared to the year before, the value of
the market grew by 1.4 per cent or EUR 53 million. The data are
based on the calculations of Statistics Finland's mass media and
cultural statistics.

Mass media market 2016 - 2017, EUR million

2016

2017

2017

Change

EUR mill.

EUR mill.

%

2016-17, %

Daily newspapers (7-4 times a week)
1)

807

785

20.7

-2.8

Other newspapers 1)

135

136

3.6

0.4

Free-distribution papers 1)

68

68

1.8

0.7

Magazines and periodicals 1)

490

470

12.4

-4.1

Books 1)3)

527

549

14.5

4.2

Publishing, total

2 027

2 008

52.9

-0.9

Television 2)

1 110

1 134

29.9

2.2

Radio

64

67

1.8

4.1

Internet advertising

324

370

9.8

14.2

Electronic media, total

1 499

1 572

41.4

4.9

Audio recordings 1)

59

64

1.7

8.5

Videos (dvd, blu-ray)

61

46

1.2

-24.9

Cinemas

96

105

2.8

9.4

Recorded media, total

217

216

5.7

-0.6

All total

3 742

3 795

100.0

1.4

Source: Statistics Finland, Mass
media and cultural statistics

1) Digital sales included.
2) Includes all of Yle public service (tv, radio,
web-service).
3) Due to a change in compilation of statistics, the results in
2017 are not totally comparable with previous results.

Publishing (incl. newspapers, free-distribution papers,
periodicals and books) is still clearly the biggest sector by its
volume in the Finnish media market. However, the sales of daily
newspapers and periodicals continued their nearly decade-long fall
in 2017, which pressed down the entire publishing. In turn, book
sales have grown in the past few years, although due to renewals in
statistics compilation the latest data cannot be fully compared
with the previous years' figures. Statistics Finland's calculation
is based on the data of the Booksellers Association of Finland and
the Finnish Book Publishers Association.

In 2017, television was the biggest individual media activity
with its volume of good EUR 1.1 billion. The television industry
here includes the entire activity of the Finnish Broadcasting
Company, television advertising in commercial television and
subscription fees to television services, which are cable TV basic
fees and pay TV fees (incl. video on-demand services such as
Netflix).

In 2017, the television industry grew boosted by pay TV by good
two per cent from the previous year. According to the data
collected by Finnpanel, an ever growing share of households follows
video on-demand services. Various pay TV fees form an increasingly
bigger part of households’ media consumption expenditure.
This appears from Statistics Finland's Household Budget Survey
published this year. In contrast, the amount and share of
television advertising in television revenues continued
declining.

Internet advertising grew by over 14 per cent from the previous
year and was around EUR 370 million in 2017.

The year 2017 was also favourable for the audio media: audio
recordings are estimated to have grown by good eight per cent and
commercial radio by good four per cent from the previous year. The
audio market is now boosted by digital sales, which according to
IFPI Finland’s data, already covered 83 per cent of Finnish
recording sales in 2017. Radio advertising has, in turn, grown
fairly steadily for several years.

The year 2017 also brought clear growth to cinemas compared to
the previous year. Cinema ticket sales and cinema advertising grew
in total by good nine per cent. According to the Finnish Film
Foundation’s data, 8.8 million visits were made to cinemas in
Finland last year. Domestic films gathered 2.4 million viewers (27
per cent of all cinema visits); by far the most the film Unknown
Soldier that was re-filmed in 2017.

According to the European Audiovisual Observatory, the video
recording market contracted by around 25 per cent from the previous
year. The data include selling of DVD and Blu-ray discs and renting
of Blu-ray films but renting data of DVD films are missing from the
calculation this time.

Despite the small growth recorded now, the size of the mass
media market has decreased further relative to the entire national
economy. In 2017, the share of mass media in GDP was 1.7 per cent,
while it was 2.1 per cent ten years earlier. From 2007, the mass
media market has contracted by 3.6 per cent and the contraction has
been quite drastic particularly in videos, audio recordings and
publishing.

Changes in the mass media market in 2007 to 2017,
%

The calculations presented here describe the mass media market
at end user level: for example, the figure on the newspaper market
is comprised of retail priced subscription and single copy sales of
newspapers, and their revenue from advertising. The figures cover
domestic production and imports but not exports. There is some
overlap between Internet advertising and other media groups.